Tag Archives: superheroes

The Dark Knight

mv5bmzyxmze1nzy4nl5bml5banbnxkftztcwmtcxoti2mq-_v1_ It is, I retroactively declare, a good weekend I think for seeing a new movie premiere. After spending a couple of hours around a pizza and an airing of Batman Begins, we rushed off to the theater for a Friday night showing. I’ve spent some time thinking about what I could possibly say about The Dark Knight in the subsequent 48 hours, and I honestly don’t have much better of an idea right now than I did walking out of the theater.

First of all, there’s the story route, but I refuse to do more than thumbnail it, because there are massive spoilers both for fantastic individual scenes and for the highly detailed and brilliantly executed plot. Anyway, a little time has passed and Batman hovers in a precarious middle ground between hated vigilante and police-sponsored hero. Gotham is gradually coming out of its dark age, and district attorney Harvey Dent’s hardline stance against the crumbling mob families is the best evidence of this fact. But there’s a bank-robbing clown who calls himself the Joker who has other ideas on that topic; and he has a plan.

All of which is stage-setting that’s clear within the first 15 minutes or so. If anyone wants to tell you more than that, don’t let them. Although Batman Begins was a lot more of a traditionally mythological hero’s journey, it had nowhere near the psychological depth of The Dark Knight. Christian Bale understands Bruce Wayne in a way that nobody but Michael Keaton has ever come close to, and Heath Ledger’s death was nothing short of a fucking tragedy for movie-goers everywhere, even if his portrayal of the Joker would have been the pinnacle of his talent. I would not have ever guessed I’d say someone surpassed Nicholson, but the writing was probably as much to blame as the acting. They really were two different characters, and the current one the darker and more insane by far.

My point being, with two such powerful leads, an equally strong supporting cast, and additional psychological elements from legal crusader Dent and returning ADA Rachel, Bruce’s love interest and Dent’s current girlfriend… with all of that going for it, there is a lot of room to play in and with a lot of interesting characters’ psyches. And this occurs in spades, to the point where it might be fair to describe the ride as an emotional wringer. But it is also the best movie I’ve seen all year, easily.[1] Juno and Iron Man come close, each in their own ways, but this hit all my buttons just right.

In summary: wow. Now go see it. (Yes, again. I know I would have tonight, if I hadn’t been at work instead.)

[1] Well. Zombie Strippers. But otherwise.

Ultimate Spider-Man: Double Trouble

For the most part, the third volume of Ultimate Spider-Man is more of the same. But when you consider what a high watermark that is, the phrase turns out to be praise rather than pejoration. Pete’s got a handle on his powers, he’s sort of got a handle on how to use them, and he has a solid ally in his corner. Naturally, therefore, the stakes get ratcheted up commensurately with his new stability. Not only is there a person at school who believes he’s seen though Spider-Man’s secret identity, not only is a philosophical, attractive, and anti-bully switch-blade wielding Gwen Stacy causing tension between Peter and Mary Jane; on top of these, one of the people who worked in the lab where Peter was bitten by the genetically-modified spider that started all the upheaval in his life has awakened from a coma with strange new powers and a grudge, and Australian Animal Planet personality Kraven the Hunter[1] has decided that a defeated Spider-Man would make an awesome trophy, not to mention bolster a flagging career.

As usual, though, it is Spider-Man’s gradual ascent towards genuine super-hero talent, Peter Parker’s lightning-quick banter, and Aunt May’s struggle to keep rein on a boy about whom she knows far less than she thinks (though far more than he thinks) that combine to steal the show. (I seriously cannot say enough good about May Parker in this series. With appearances in fewer than half of the twenty-one individual comics I’ve read over these three volumes, she has managed to redeem a character that I expected to dislike forever.)

[1] If this sounds kind of familiar, well, I expect it’s supposed to.

The Incredible Hulk

I can’t really explain what went wrong with The Incredible Hulk. It was much more of a super-hero movie than Ang Lee’s much derided The Hulk from a few years ago. It did a really good job of pulling in numerous sly references to the ’70s TV show, plus of course to the original Marvel comics. The effects were always spot on, as they have been of late. And I have to geek out a little bit at the way that the various movies are being tied into a cohesive Marvel Universe, just as the comics have always done.

These all sound like pretty good things. And yet, it felt like a late winter release from Marvel a la Daredevil, rather than the summer renaissance they’ve provided so often this decade, most recently with Iron Man. I know that part of the problem has got to lie with the Hulk himself; at least, what I’ve read from 1962-1967 reveals him as an insufficiently interesting character with especially uninteresting villains. And sure enough, the majority of the movie related to Bruce Banner being hunted by the army, angered, transformed, eventually captured anyway, and so on, because the army and General Ross are practically his only interesting foes, and they because of the human element. Which is good and all, but falls flat in an ostensible superhero movie. You need super villains for things to work.[1] If you don’t believe me, ask Ang Lee.

On the other hand, though, whatever pejorative comments have been thrown at Lee over the past few years, the primary flaw of his Hulk was in making a movie whose reach far exceeded its grasp. There are worse epitaphs to be cursed with, and among them is to make a movie that simply didn’t bother to reach very far at all.

[1] And, okay, this had a super-villain. Which was pretty much an alternate brute strength guy who we do not like because he isn’t green and because Liv Tyler doesn’t like him. (Well, and he’s kind of a douchebag.) Still, not much of an improvement on the army, which he is incidentally a part of in the first place. On the bright side, they laid groundwork for the only interesting Hulk villain I’ve seen in the comics to be present in a potential sequel. So that’s something.

Ultimate Fantastic Four: N-Zone

Ex Machina: Fact v. Fiction

The third volume of Ex Machina is essentially more of the same. Which is to say, it contains odds and ends of political discussion[1], bits and pieces of Mayor Mitchell Hundred’s past, both before and after he gained his power over machinery of all kinds[2], and, most interestingly to me, continued gradual reveals about the source of his powers and other related incidents around the world[3]. Also, there’s a rival vigilante superhero in New York City! Plus more drama within Hundred’s past and present support systems!

I’m just saying: still a solid story, about which I have little of substance to say at this point. But I have a feeling that it’s all going to come together someday, and I’ll be, like, wow. It’s a theory, anyway.

Oh, and also, the occasional skyline shots with the remaining World Trade Center tower portrayed prominently? Still just as chilling as they were in the first volume.

[1] Well, really a lot less than usual, but replaced by civic responsibility in the guise of jury duty. Which falls in the same bucket, I guess.
[2] Including a bit of a family bombshell, something I’m starting to realize that Vaughan is pretty good at; I should pay attention to his episodes of Lost and issues of Buffy Season 8 and see if the trend holds there, as it has in this and Y: The Last Man.
[3] See, without going into spoilers, there’s an event that seems related to Hundred’s powers, but which is later revealed to have been a mislead. Except, I’m pretty sure that reveal was the real mislead, and that this information will be very important later.

Ultimate Fantastic Four: Doom

Ultimate Spider-Man: Power and Responsibility

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A thing that is rapidly striking me as odd about the Ultimate Marvel universe is how unrelated the stories are, compared to 1960s Marvel. I mean, I’ve read three origin stories now, and all of them refer to events that are mutually exclusive of each other. As though they’re all actually set in mildly disparate realities from one another. This is not something that troubles me particularly, just an oddity. I mention it in part because it struck me last time and I never said, but also because it’s one of the many aspects informing my reading of the first Ultimate Spider-Man.

Other aspects include the initial Spider-Man movie, which appears to have been heavily influenced by this volume, my readings of the first 31 issues of the Amazing Spider-Man comic[1], and my expectations relative to the other Ultimate series in which I’ve dabbled that this one would be the most kid-oriented. And indeed, our Peter Parker is a mere 15 years old, with a fair bit of modern angst to him. So, on the whole, it really feels like I should be feeling a little meh about the whole thing. Instead, I enjoyed myself a lot. My guesses about this are that I’m even more of a sucker for high school angst than I thought (and, come on, get over it already, man), or that lowered expectations were just right for the book, or that the original story Stan Lee put together in 1963 has such a heaping helping of mythic resonance that any given retelling will affect me just as much as the first time I saw it. I think there’s a pretty good chance it’s that last one.

[1] I’ll be reading #32 pretty immediately after this review posts, in point of fact. Mary Jane Watson has been the elephant in the corner for at least 25 issues now, which is kind of hilarious to me, given my knowledge of what the future holds. I have to believe that Stan Lee had her in mind as the real deal all along; the set-up is too perfect to be coincidence.

Iron Man (2008)

mv5bmtcznti2oduwof5bml5banbnxkftztcwmtu0ntizmw-_v1_sy1000_cr006741000_al_ Going to a sneak preview is a thing that… well, okay, I’ve done it pretty damn recently, but I haven’t been to an advance preview for a blockbuster that everyone in the world is going to see, at least not in a while. However, I have an awesome friend named Kara who has that skill where she knows every single person on the planet, and can therefore get into clubs or crowded restaurants sans reservation, that kind of thing. As a result, she received an astonishing number of passes to Iron Man last night. Enough to fill more than an entire middle row with people that she knows (many of them people I know as well, and not incidentally including me). And this is just not an unusual event around her. So, yay Kara!

And then, on top of being surrounded by awesome, there was the whole ‘crowd of people who all love this idea too’ that I’ve mentioned liking from time to time. The energy of a theater full of real fans, in a big event movie like this, is something I really dig. (Even though, sometimes, I felt a little like our row was appreciating everything on a more visceral level than the rest of the crowd. I don’t know if this is factual or just proximity to what I could hear best, and if it is true, I don’t how much to blame on the huge press section just below us in the middle.) The downside of crowds is that, even in shorts and a t-shirt, I was dying of heat by the final act. Too many people and lack of air-conditioning spells consequences, my friends. But they did sell me a milkshake, so that was pleasant.

The careful readers among you may be noticing that I haven’t said very much about the actual movie yet. There’s a good reason for this, which is that I don’t wish to set anyone’s expectations at an unfortunate level. Realize that my Iron Man experience essentially consists of the first couple of years of him in the comics, plus the first many years of his time with the Avengers, and whatever odds and ends I’ve heard about his doings in the Civil War thing that just happened, but my feeling is that the latter has no real bearing on anything for these purposes. But, with the amount of Iron Man experience I have, I’m prepared to say that this is the best Marvel movie that wasn’t Spider-Man.

Contributing factors to this claim include the awesomeness of Robert Downey Jr.’s portrayal of Tony Stark, more special effects than you can shake a pointed stick at, the tastefully understated but always clear and heartfelt interactions[1] between Tony and his friends (which casts a wider net than you may initially think), the ease with which origin story and Iron Man versus a bad guy were shoehorned into the same two hours, and I’ll have to reiterate how great Robert Downey Jr. was. Even though I’m only familiar with the 1960s versions of the characters, it’s instantly apparent that at least Tony Stark and Pepper Potts were meant to grow into these two characters when adjusted for modernity. There’s no way to ask for more than pitch perfect characterization in a comic book adaptation; if you have that, the rest is guaranteed to work, says me. And this? Did.

[1] Later, you’re going to realize that this is hilarious.

Ex Machina: Tag

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When I read the first volume of Ex Machina, I wasn’t very impressed. The story just failed to grab me, which was a pity since I like the author so much. But it got reasonably good reviews in the comments, plus my graphic novel buddy liked it, so I proceeded apace, which pace is more akin to a crawl these days, but I digress. The important part is that I’ve read the second volume, Tag, and now I’m sold.

It still has all of the high-level (and very occasionally, the nitty-gritty) politics of running New York City that Mayor Mitchell Hundred has to deal with, that I found simultaneously so well-written and so non-involving last time. But instead of a somewhat lifeless origin story holding the politics together, they threw in a solid plot with far-reaching ramifications that I’m excited about seeing further investigated, and the moreso since this is the same author as the superb Y: The Last Man series. He’s pretty well proven his ability to have a destination in mind for his world-spanning mysteries, which would be my only remaining concern at this point, the art having been solid. (Well, I could take or leave the faces, but everything else is dandy.) The mystery in question, interspersed among Hundred’s dating life and dealings with school vouchers and gay marriage, goes to the heart of his power over machines. Because whatever it was that gave him those powers appears to be cropping up in other places in New York now, and affecting other people in dire and possibly diabolical ways. Mysterious!

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Shards of Delirium

Fragments of Delight